September 13, 2006
Farm
This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “farm”. Yeah, I know, I’m always a bit slow off the mark. Anyway, my wee farm was inspired by this poem by Russell Edson.
Counting Sheep
A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them.
They are like grains of rice.
He wonders if it is possible to shrink something out of existence.
He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess, if they have any sense of scale. Perhaps they just think the test tube is a glass barn...
He wonders what he should do with them; they certainly have less meat and wool than ordinary sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
He wonders if they could be used as a substitute for rise, a sort of woolly rice...
He wonders if he just shouldn’t rub them into a red paste between his fingers.
He wonders if they are breeding, or if any of them have died.
He puts them under a microscope and falls asleep counting them...
*
Speaking of farms, at St Andrew’s last week we had a visit from two people who work for CEPAD, a Protestant NGO in Nicaragua. It was fun hearing them speak, as the part of Costa Rica I lived in was just over the border from Nicaragua, and there were lots of Nicaraguans living there. My host family had a Nicaraguan maid. A lot of Costa Ricans in my town were quite racist against the “Nicas”, saying tat they were all thieves, liars, etc.
Anyway, CEPAD is based on a philosophy of self-determination and empowerment. They work with (not for) the poorest of the poor, providing skills training and resources. A lot of the work they do is teaching people about sustainable agriculture (hence the “farm” link).
One of the speakers mentioned that, though there are dairy farms in Nicaragua, most people buy powdered milk from NZ. It’s cheaper. The local farmers, working in third world conditions, can’t compete with our high tech industry.
A couple of weeks ago I organised a “sustainability challenge” for our regular church lunch. People were encouraged to think about different areas, such as chemical use, human impact, packaging, and food miles (how far the food has travelled). One member of the congregation is very opposed to the idea of food miles, and at the lunch he pointed out that if food miles were important we couldn’t have any coffee, or chocolate, or various other foods that we import. I felt a bit stink, because I felt like the whole thing became a joke, not just the food miles issue, but the other issues as well. Of course we’re not going to buy everything local, but I think it’s one of many factors to bear in mind. If there are two identical products and one is local, one not, I try to go for the local one. And if there’s a fair trade option, I try to buy that, if I can. Of course price and all sorts of other things come into it as well. But I believe it’s important to stop and think about these things from time to time.
Anyway, my mini sheep are all locally bred :)